Cathy's Art Diary

Charming small exhibition at the British Museum of portrait drawings by a group of late 17th century artists based in London who knew each other. The display marks the acquisition by the museum of drawings by Samuel Cooper and Richard Gibson and they are shown with other works by artists in their circle who include Sir Peter Lely, Charles Beale, son of Mary Beale, and Sir Godfrey Kneller. The images are of family members, friends and servants as well as fellow artists. Most touching was Cooper's drawing of his cousin's infant son who died at a few weeks old. I loved Gibson's delicate drawing of his son-in-law, Michael Rosse, a jeweller and Kneller's of the artist Hugh Howard who he trained with in Rome. Closes 25 January 20

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum looking at the origins and visual development of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. I felt the show was wrongly titled as a lot wasn’t ancient. I thought I’d read somewhere that it was about how India influenced Greece and Rome but I should have paid more attention to the subtitle. However I liked the way the show began with ancient sculptures from the three religions and ended with contemporary ones.   There were some beautiful objects and it was well explained but, as ever in large British Museum shows, the low wordy labels created bottle necks not helped by people who’d opted for the large print booklets of labels still standing in front on the label to read the booklet!   It did make me muse on how art, like standard archetypal human stories, develops in a similar way everywhere. A lot of the art and sculpture from around 1000AD had a feel of Norman art and a lot of the iconography felt similar like the use of halos.  ...

Excellent online lecture from the National Gallery looking at art from the Tudor period. Aliki Braine interviewed Christina Farady, author of a book of the same title as the talk, as part of the Members’ Book Club series. Faraday explained how the Tudors hit a sweet spot in research terms and in the popular culture as they are strange enough to be a mystery but close enough for us to be able to find out more. She said the monarchs are iconic and identifiable “like face cards in a deck of cards”. She explained how she hopes the book fills a gap as she covers both paintings and objects and looks at art not just for the court but also for the newly rising middle class or Middling Sort. She explained the objects were more valuable than paintings at the time and had the advantage of being portable. She used this portrait of Margaret Beaufort to point out the sort of valuable objects they owned. Faraday also pointed out that the country wasn’t as isolated as we tend to think and talke...

Dry exhibition at the National Theatre looking at how they had performed Greek plays and how the theatre itself had been influenced by Greek theatre. I say dry as it was very text and av based. It would have benefited from a few more set models or costumes. The av wasn't displayed in an engaging way. It grouped 5 or 6 clips or interviews into a loop which took a lot time to watch while standing up in ear phones. I'm sure the content was excellent but it wasn't conducive to lingering. My favourite section looked at how the Olivier space is based on a Greek theatre design and how Sir Peter Hall, the first director, and Sir Denys Lasdun, the architect, visited theatres in Greece together for inspiration. The display marked the production "Bachaae" which I was there to see and really enjoyed. With that hindsight I realised I had got more form the display than I thought as I understood more about the work particularly about the role of music and movement in it. ...

Interesting exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of abstract art since the 1950s. This display was prompted by the recent acquisition of a drawing by American sculptor, Alice Adams, and it traces the development of abstract art in this period throughout the Western World. A tough ask in a small space. I must admit I struggle with this type of abstract work but the show told the story clearly and I felt I knew more even if I didn't respond to the work. There was a good cross section of artists from Philip Guston to Gerard Richter. I did like this burnt work by Susan Schwalb where she burnt the paper with a candle then added precis lines with a copper stylus. Closed 12 October 2025

Clear and useful lecture at the Wallace Collection tracing Flemish art form Memling to Rubens. Richard Williams from the Royal Collection Trust used three works from the Wallace Collection, Memling’s “Angle with a Sword”, Pieter Pourbus’s “Allegory of True Love” and Rubens’ “The Holy Family with St Elizabeth and John the Baptist” to anchor the lecture over three sessions. He started with discussing what the Flemish tradition was and then looked at how Memling worked within this but also took it further. He looked at how Italian patrons commissioned work from him. He moved into the 16th century and looked at how Gossaert was influenced by his trip to Rome in 1508 with Philip of Burgundy. We looked at how more Italian art was appearing in Brussels such as the Raphael cartoons which were in the city at the time with the tapestry weavers and how this influenced artists. That session ended by looking at the Pourbus painting and the Italian and Humanist influences in it. The talk en...